dictdot

Python dict accessible by dot, similar to how it's done with an object in Javascript.

It provides the same nature of a dict, plus facilities in notation and a find functionality that helps in the data exploration process. Particularly useful when dealing with a large JSON that you don't know much about.

Implemented by overriding some builtin methods of regular Python dict, it has no impact in performance or memory footprint.

Usage

Minimal example

from dictdot import dictdot

d = dictdot()

# Get and set items either by dot or regular notation.
d["foo"] = 1
d.bar = 1
assert d.foo == d["bar"]

# Nested dicts are also converted to dictdot.
d.bar = [{"baz": 1}]
assert type(d.bar[0]) is dictdot

# Find elements by key or value.
assert [".foo", ".bar[0].baz"] == list(d.find(value=1))

Performance analysis

Now let's see a more illustrative use case. We'll be using this ~25MB JSON file. If you have curl installed in your terminal, you can download it as follows:

curl -JO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/json-iterator/test-data/master/large-file.json

The following Python code can be run as it is if you have dictdot installed and large-file.json in the current directory. It will load the file in memory, then convert it to dictdot, and perform some find tasks on it, measuring the time in each step. I share the time for each step running it in my 2018 laptop (2.6GHz CPU)):

import json
import time

from dictdot import dictdot

def get_time(old_t=None):
    new_t = time.time()
    if old_t:
        print(f"Time: {new_t - old_t:.2f} sec\n")
    return new_t

t = get_time()

print("Load data from file.")
with open("large-file.json") as f:
    data = json.load(f)
    t = get_time(t)
# Time: 0.36 sec

print("Convert to `dictdot`.")
data = [dictdot(d) for d in data]
t = get_time(t)
# Time: 4.67 sec

print("List all keys.")
ks = list(dictdot.find(data))
print(f"{len(ks)} keys found.")
t = get_time(t)
# 626243 keys found.
# Time: 5.53 sec

print("Find values by function.")
vs = list(dictdot.find(data, value=lambda v: type(v) is str and " dict " in v))
print(f"{len(vs)} values found.")
t = get_time(t)
# 2 values found.
# Time: 0.62 sec

print("Convert back to dict.")
dic = [d.as_dict() for d in data]
t = get_time(t)
# Time: 0.38 sec

Finding values

In the example above, the variable vs contains paths that represent items within data. These items match the condition of being strings, and containing the substring " dict " (with trailing spaces). Let's check them:

vs[0]
# '[169].payload.comment.body'

data[169].payload.comment.body
# "What about making the combined dict a local variable, like...

Comparing the notation

Which prefer?

vs[1]
# '[1275].payload.commits[0].message'

assert data[1275].payload.commits[0].message is \
    data[1275]["payload"]["commits"][0]["message"]

Feature summary

• Can initialize dictdot the same way as dict:

  a = ["foo", "bar", "baz"]
  b = range(3)
  d = dictdot(zip(a, b))

• Access items by dot notation, or as a dict:

  assert d.foo < d["bar"] < d.get("baz")

• Also when setting an item:

  d.bar = {
      "fee": 1,
      "boo": None,
  }

• Convert to regular dict:

  d2 = d.as_dict()
  assert d == d2
  assert type(d2) is dict

• Function to find keys and values nested in the dict structure:

  # Find every key equal to "foo".
  assert list(d.find(key="foo")) == [".foo"]
  
  # Find every value that bool-evaluates to False.
  assert list(d.find(value=lambda v: not v)) == [".foo", ".bar.boo"]
  
  # Both key and value must evaluate to True.
  assert list(d.find(key="bar", value=1)) == []

See the tests in the source code for more details about the behavior and usage.